Acid test novelist and critic: Mario Vargas Llosa (1936- )

A spree of reading this Peruvian winner of a Nobel Prize was highlighted by the novels Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and In Praise of the Stepmother, but what I value more is his nonfiction A Writer’s Reality, especially his sense that Spanish literature veers toward its unique lines of fantasy surrealism rather than fact as a consequence of the Inquisition.